


we're young hearts, look at us go

by brella



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Humor, Misunderstandings, Prom, Team Bonding, The L Word - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wally, this is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Artemis tells him outright. “Planning a prom? You? You can barely plan picking me up for a date on time.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're young hearts, look at us go

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe it is the year of our lord 2016 and i wrote young justice fanfiction.

Wally would like to start off this story by saying two words: Shut up. All of his ideas are great ideas.

That was nine words. Whatever. The finer points of mathematics aren’t super critical when you’re trying to plan a prom.

“Wally, this is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Artemis, his _girlfriend_ , who’s supposed to be _supportive_ but is instead _terrible_ , tells him outright, stretched out on his bed with her chin propped up on her fists. Her eyebrows are in a skeptical scowl, flat and heavy. “Planning a prom? _You_? You can barely plan picking me up for a date on time.”

Wally whirls on her with an indignant point. “Hey, come on, no fair! That was _one_ time. Five times. That was… a time.”

“Yeah, tell that to my frostbite,” Artemis mutters. “And you wonder why I never wait outside for you anymore.”

“Okay, babe, focus!” Wally exclaims, waving his hands around for emphasis until they blur a little. Artemis’s eyes follow them dully. “You’re my only co-planner; quit slacking off.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to this,” Artemis says, scrunching her nose. “I don’t remember agreeing to _any_ of this. What do we need a Team prom for, anyway?”

“Uh, a _ton_ of reasons?” Wally says with incredulously raised eyebrows. “What, did you want an itemized list?”

“You know what?” Artemis says, cottoning onto the sarcasm immediately and scooting just a little bit forward, beaming. “Yeah, I’d _love_ one! List me up, Wall-man, king of great plans.”

“I will!” Wally barks, and jerks up an angry finger. “Reason number one! We haven't had any Team bonding in a million years!”

“Sorry; I meant king of hyperboles,” Artemis says. Her lips have twisted in amusedly like she’s trying to hold in a snigger. “Also, yes, we have. We spend more time together than I spend with my own mom, practically.”

“Beating up on bad guys _so_ does not count,” Wally retorts. “I mean _actual_ bonding. Free of bullets and bombs and Joker’s weird arsenic pies.”

“That sounds like bonding to me.”

“Of _course_ it does,” Wally yells, “which is _exactly_ what brings us to reason number two! We never get to all hang out and do normal stuff anymore, because we’re too busy almost dying all the time. That’s not great for Supey’s sunny disposition! We need some levity! It’s like that show Megs watches, right? Treat yourself!”

“Yo’ self,” Artemis corrects him.

“Whatever. Reason number three!” He practically waves his three fingers in her face, making her lean back to avoid going cross-eyed. “We all go to different schools and are in different years, right? That’s a lot of prom-effort. That’s a lot of memory on a digital camera. So isn’t it better if we just have one huge prom for all of us? Condense it? Plus, I don’t think Kaldur even knows what a prom _is_ ; we need to educate him.”

Artemis lets out a soft breath, setting her chin in one hand now and letting the other one dangle off the edge of the bed. “Aw, Kaldur. Beautiful cinnamon roll. Too good for this world, too pure.”

With a roll of his eyes, Wally uncurls another finger. “Reason number four. I really, really want to play DJ.”

“Well, any compelling case you were building just got shot out the window with that one.”

“Arte- _miiiis_! Come on!”

Artemis sighs, dropping her other hand and staring stonily up at him. He amps up his imploring pout as much as he can, clasping his hands at his chin for effect. When that doesn’t work, he settles for dropping to his knees at the foot of the bed, shuffling closer.

“ _Pleeeeease_ ,” he whines, throwing his head back dramatically. “Have pity on this poor Wall-man. Help him realize his dream!”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, sorry, is that _not_ what I did at New Year’s?”

When he stiffens, preparing to desperately backpedal, he’s surprised to hear her laugh. Loosening, he blinks in wonder at her, at the way the openly amused expression makes her eyes look brighter and more alive.

“Oh, fine, whatever; let’s do it.” She jabs a finger into his chest. “But I am _not_ slow-dancing with you, got it?”

Her attempt at a sour expression is undermined by the stifled smile lurking in the corners of her mouth. Unabashed, he grins at her, reaching up to clasp her hand between his, heart fizzling when she doesn’t pull away.

“This,” he says, “is gonna be _awesome_.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Artemis would like to make something abundantly clear: it is not awesome. She regrets so much, and also everything.

“So I was thinking,” Wally yells conversationally, like he’s _not_ in the middle of punching the lights out of one of Riddler’s many extravagantly-dressed goons, and she and Robin are _not_ presently surrounded by about three or four of their own, “IKEA’s having a sale on string lights. Doesn’t that sound like an _awesome_ idea for the decoration pile? Because I think it does.”

“Kid, _not now_ ,” Artemis growls, before throwing caution to the wind and just violently headbutting the buff guy who tries to grab her. She finishes him off with a high kick to the face before twisting around to slug another one with her elbow.

“The _question_ is, should we shoot for pink or blue? Ooh, or _orange_? Nah, too Halloweeny…”

Robin giggles through his teeth, flicking out birdarangs with alacrity. “What’s _this_? Wedding plans?”

M’gann whirls around in midair several yards away. “You’re getting _married_?!”

Conner, beset upon by about ten guys at once, grunts, “ _Focus_ …”

“Aaaah, right, sorry!”

 _Um, guys, poor use of the mind link much?_ Zatanna’s thoughts rush fleetingly by, and Artemis glances over to where she’s levitating three dudes in preparation for one of Raquel’s containment force-field bubbles.

 _Agreed. I believe it would behoove us from a security standpoint to limit conversations to the mind link, thank you_ , Kaldur thinks sharply at the lot of them, earning an unseen apologetic shrug from Robin and a heavy eyeroll from Artemis.

 _And I believe it would behoove us from an everything standpoint to limit Wally’s stupid fake prom ideas to silence_ , she mentally retorts, tugging an arrow back and sniping a distant Riddler in the knee with a polyurethane foam arrow. _I stunned Riddler; it’s now or never!_

As usual, the bulk of the henchmen decide to up and bail once the Team converges on Riddler. Robin’s got him tied up neatly in seconds, and as everyone encircles him with matching (practiced) badass scowls, Conner wipes some mud from his face and asks, a bit cautiously:

“So… ‘fake prom?’”

Wally lets out a yelp, clapping his hands over his mouth like he’s the one who revealed the secret. M’gann is staring at him, wide amber eyes teetering on the brink of unrepentant excitement. Robin’s got his arms folded, and is smirking. Kaldur looks like he’s emotionally readying himself for a funeral. Zatanna waggles her eyebrows at Artemis. Raquel yawns.

“Soooooo,” Wally finally says, drawing the word out for as long as possible, probably trying to stall for a good lie. “Yeah. Uh. Surprise?”

M’gann squeals, bouncing up and down so enthusiastically that she just winds up floating.

Conner frowns. “Why is it fake?”

“Well, it’s not _fake_ , exactly, Supey, that was just, uh—”

“It’s an all-purpose prom,” Artemis explains bluntly. “For all of us. Wally’s the planner.”

“Aaaaand Artemis is the _co_ -planner,” Wally adds. Artemis winces. Damn it, she was trying to get _out_. “It’s gonna be the _bomb_.”

“Dot com?” Robin asks, lifting his fist sideways.

“Dot _org_ ,” Wally says, grinning, and when they do their stupid fist bump, they make explosion noises.

“Forgive me,” Kaldur says, frowning solemnly, crossing his arms, “but… what is a prom, precisely?”

“Called it,” Wally mutters.

“Oh, _Kaldur_!” M’gann exclaims breathlessly, whirling on him so quickly that it makes her cape flutter. “You don’t _know_? The prom is an ancient and treasured Earth custom, wherein adolescent humans typically between the ages of sixteen and eighteen engage in pleasurable dancing and formal wear to demonstrate their—”

“This is all _very_ adorable,” Riddler interjects before Wally can dive into an answer, every syllable full of repulsion, “but in case you punks hadn’t noticed, I’m _still_ right here where you tied me up, and I’d like to get a head start on my latest escape from whatever crummy prison you throw me in, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, _whatever_ , Joker,” Dick taunts him, which earns him a long, shrieked explanation as to how he is _not_ the Joker and their names are _not that similar_ and a bunch of other crap Artemis doesn’t pay attention to, because she got bored of psychologically tormenting supervillains, like, _yesterday_. “Listen, Nygma. Calling yourself the Riddler is _such_ false advertising. You run out of terrible jokes after about ten minutes. Or maybe that’s just how long it takes us to hand your butt to you, on average.”

“Oh, you wanna go, little man?” Riddler chuckles, high and nasal. “Okay! Okay! We can go! What comes out at night without being called, and is lost during the day without being stolen?”

M’gann pounds a fist into her open palm. “Late night TV shows!”

Conner raises one finger. “Robin.”

“Hey!”

Artemis sighs shortly before any of the others can throw in their dazzling answers. “Guys, I’m pretty sure it’s stars.”

Judging by Riddler’s crestfallen face, she nailed it.

Judging by Wally’s excited gasp, she wishes she hadn’t.

“Stars!” he yells, body starting to buzz at the edges with energy. His eyes seem suddenly brighter. “We’ll deck the place out with stars! Not real stars, obviously; that’s impossible. Babe, you are a _genius_ , and that is exactly why I love you.”

Artemis feels a blush consume her, from the belly up.

“Wh—! Y-You—you l-l- _lo_ —?”

Dick explodes into a storm of laughter. “Oh, nice way to drop it, KF. Real classy. You’re the generation’s greatest romantic.”

Kaldur’s beleaguered sigh saves Artemis any further spluttering, but Wally is nonetheless in panic mode, pale-faced and gesticulating, but not actually making any noises.

“Ugh,” Riddler groans. “I think I might prefer Batman.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The weeks leading up to May 19 are a grand flurry of Party Central receipts, questions from Red Tornado, glow-in-the-dark star putty, and Artemis obviously avoiding Wally.

“I don’t get it,” he grouses to Dick as the two of them attempt to properly festoon two silver streamers from the disco ball it had taken them an hour to install after Conner broke the first one in a fit of rage. Red Tornado is holding the ladder (upon which Dick and Wally are seated, back to back) and doing, in Wally’s expert opinion, a great job of _not_ asking questions. “There’s not anything on my face, right? I didn’t like, insult _Alice in Wonderland_ by accident?”

“One, yes, your face is on your face, which I _have_ to say is a big hurdle to overcome for you, but I have faith,” Dick replies, tongue sticking out in concentration as he tries to push in a troublesome thumbtack. “Two, no, because if you did, accidental or not, you _would_ have been declared legally missing at _least_ a week ago, and your body _would_ remain undiscovered for centuries into the future.”

“Ha, ha. Ha, ha, hahaha,” Wally deadpans. “Dude, I’m serious; she’s clearly upset about _something_.” He gasps. “You don’t think she got her memory wiped and forgot we were dating, do you?!”

Dick’s sigh, though light, seems like it reaches out to even the most distant corners of the world. He finishes his share of the festooning, letting his head drop limply back so he can stare at the ceiling.

“You know what? Sure, KF,” he says, throwing an arm in the air for surrendering emphasis. “That’s _totally_ more likely than the other thing. About how you just busted out the l-card in front of everybody.”

“Aw, come _on_ , that’s romcom stuff,” Wally says, nudging a thumbtack in with his thumb and letting the streamer sag in a perfect, dipping arc. “Artemis is _super_ above that. Love doesn’t scare her! Spiders, maybe, and Freddy Krueger. But not _that_.”

“ _Maybe_ it would scare _anybody_ if it got dropped on them like the Joker’s latest pie bomb,” Dick says with a sarcastic shrug. “You know! _Maybe_. Just saying.”

“Oh, what do you know,” Wally mutters with a roll of his eyes. “You’re like, twelve. You know about Pop-Tarts and combustibles. Love is beyond your tiny brain’s comprehension.”

“Can I just casually point out that I got my first kiss at roughly the same time you did?” Dick says mischievously. “We’re on equal footing, if anything. A sentence it _pains_ me to say.”

“Whatever,” Wally says, stubbornly crossing his arms and turning his nose up. “I have a girlfriend; you don’t. My knowledge trumps yours.” After a second, before Dick can conjure up another jibe, he loosens, blinking at the ceiling with a coded expression. “Besides… I kinda like how it happened. I’d been trying to work out some great way to say it for, like, months, but—it just came out like it was the most normal thing ever. No drama. The sky’s blue, and I love Artemis. Y’know?”

“Disgusting,” Dick snickers, hitting the side of his leg before moving to nimbly disembark from the ladder. “It might be natural for _you_ , dude, but love hasn’t exactly been a natural factor in _her_ life; just throwing that out there. But what do I know? She’s a person, not a Pop-Tart. My expertise ends here.”

“Okay, but—” Wally shifts, craning his neck over his shoulder to give Dick an imploring look. He chews his lip briefly. “Let’s say she _was_ a Pop-Tart. How would you advise me then?”

Dick chortles and shrugs. “Toast it first?”

Wally takes offense to that statement for two reasons: one, Dick is the world’s Most Unhelpful Best Friend, and ought to be punished; two, everybody on the planet knows that Pop-Tarts are better straight out of the box, untoasted. _God_.

He lets out a few wordless grumbles and moves to climb down the ladder, and away from Dick, this failure of a conversation, and the prime view of Artemis’s pointedly closed quarters door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Four hours before Operation Prom is to commence, Wally realizes that he had completely forgotten to buy any snacks.

“What?!” Zatanna shrieks. She actually sounds mad. Wally can’t help shrinking under her domineering blue gaze. “ _You_ , of _all people_?! You have _got_ to be kidding me!”

Even Kaldur is exasperated, bowing his head solemnly and shaking it. Raquel is tapping her foot, glaring eyes narrowed at Wally. Conner’s arms are crossed, and his eyes are even thinner than Raquel’s with annoyance.

“Who would have thought?” Dick sighs, bracing his hands on his hips. “A modern master of streamer-festooning, disco ball-hanging, and papier-mâché solar system decoration making, and yet when it comes to sustenance for a room full of people, he’s no better than a troglodyte.”

“Shut up!” Wally snaps, because he has nothing better to say.

“For God’s sake, who’s going to go down to the Surf and get supplies?” Zatanna asks the room. (The Surf is the local supermarket, fifteen minutes from Mt. Justice; two if it’s Wally.) “Because it is _not_ going to be me.”

“Seconded,” Raquel says. “Wall-man here’s the bozo who messed up; I say he goes.”

“Oh, come on, guys!” M’gann exclaims, swooping to Wally’s defense, bless her angelic soul. She comes to float beside him, hands on her hips. “Wally’s gone to so much trouble to do all of this for us; that’s no way to repay him! I think we can all afford to pitch in for one measly thing!”

Apologetic grumbles of agreement scatter through the room. Wally glances furtively at Artemis, who’s standing next to Conner, rolling her eyes.

“I’m happy to go to the store to get some food, Wally,” M’gann says with a grin. “I’ve been needing some ice cream sandwiches anyway.”

“I never should have told you about those,” Conner mutters.

“I’ll go, too,” Artemis says with a cursory raise of her hand. It turns into a stretch. Wally goes wide-eyed at her volunteering, but also at the satisfied noise she makes after loosening again. “Give us a list of what to get, Wally.”

“We can put it on Bats’s credit card,” Dick giggles. Wally is sometimes alarmed by the amount of things Dick says they can put on Batman’s credit card. How rich _is_ he, anyway?

“Sounds fine to me,” Artemis says, then yawns. “C’mon, Megs, we’d better go now if we want to have time to get ready and junk.”

“Right!” M’gann says, soaring over to follow Artemis toward the zeta tubes. Her next sentence is quiet, but Wally still hears it: “And this’ll be the perfect chance for us to have some ‘girl talk!’”

“No,” Artemis says curtly. After that, they’re out of earshot.

 _Girl talk_.

Wally waits for everyone to disperse to their own objectives—getting ready, making sure the sound system works, clearing out freezer space for M’gann’s incoming ice cream sandwiches—before pulling his goggles surreptitiously out of his jeans pocket and speeding off to follow them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It ends up being kind of a fruitless mission. The store music and dinging door, plus an excitably shouting toddler, all conspire to make it next to impossible for Wally to overhear what Artemis and M’gann are saying as they browse the cookie aisle. He hears the tail end of it, though, when they get to chips and dips, and he’s crouched on the other side of the bay, under the Hostess snacks—Artemis saying, in a strange, almost defeated voice, “You’re right. I’ve been thinking about it, and—I’m just going to say it. Tonight. I can’t really avoid it anymore.”

Then, M’gann, clement and encouraging: “It’s scary, I know, and it can be hard! But you have to go after what makes you happy. Even if your biggest obstacle is yourself.”

And oh, God, Wally thinks desperately, grabbing a bag of trail mix and clutching it dramatically to his chest for reassurance, she’s gonna break up with him.

“These look good!” M’gann exclaims about something at the same moment Artemis says, “Did you hear something?”

Wally takes that as his cue to drop the trail mix and run.

Note to self: Following girls can only ever end in failure and ruin; don’t do it. Also, it makes you a creep.

Second note to self: Figure out how to deal with break-ups in time for impending, inevitable break-up.

Third note to self: That was an amazing deal on Fritos! Come back ASAP with wallet!

 

 

* * *

 

 

So, okay. Wally’s not going to let the looming sense of despair and demise bum him out. It’s prom night, and Kaldur is wearing a suit and looking uncomfortable but still eloquently voicing his appreciation for Ke$ha, and Conner had put a bow tie on Red Tornado, and there’s a giant, and he means _giant_ , amount of cheese balls to feast on. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

He pulls at his yellow dress shirt for the tenth time, straightens his red tie, questions his decision to wear a yellow dress shirt and a red tie when every other dude he knows is looking cool and dashing in a freaking suit. He’s been doing nothing for the past twenty minutes but moping around like a dope and eating. Oh, and he just spilled salsa on himself. Perfect. Better focus on the pretzels instead.

Artemis had shown up fashionably late in the same zeta tube as Dick and Zatanna, and Wally had needed to frantically pick his jaw up off the floor. He hears from Zatanna that Artemis’s mom had made the sleeveless pine green ao dai herself, originally for Artemis’s school prom, as a matter of fact. Wally’s no style expert, or anything, but as he stares at the corner where Artemis is now hanging out after dancing with Dick, Kaldur, and Zatanna to “Tonight Tonight,” he doubts any garment has ever looked as made for any person as that dress does for Artemis.

“Then tell her!” M’gann exclaims, startling him into coughing out his mouthful of pretzels. “Oops. Sorry! I couldn’t help myself…”

“No sweat, Green Cheeks,” Wally chokes, eyes watering. “’Sides, I can’t tell her anyway. She’s been giving ol’ Wallster the silent treatment.”

And why would M’gann be pushing him to bare his deepest feelings to Artemis if she _knows_ he’s due for unmitigated rejection? Jeez. Martians can be cruel.

“Not that he’s done anything to try to stop it,” Conner interjects. He’d gone all out coordinating with M’gann’s frothy blue dress, from his tie and a handkerchief right down to his Superman socks (Wally has the same pair, come to think of it).

Any semblance of pity on M’gann’s face disappears at that and she scrunches her nose in frustration. Wally desperately reaches for a handful of tortilla chips and stuffs them into his mouth, avoiding eye contact.

“Wa- _lly_ ,” she scolds him. “That is not how you do a relationship!”

“Indeed,” Kaldur’s voice chimes in from over Wally’s shoulder, giving him yet _another_ scare of his life, complete with a yell and a jump. “My friend, you seem on edge. Is something the matter? Should you not be filled with joy, witnessing your efforts in organizing this ceremony come to fruition?”

“R-Right, joy,” Wally sputters into his fist—he’d been in the middle of swallowing his chips that time. “H-Haha. Yeah. I’m all joyed out.”

“I’m fairly sure the correct jargon would be ‘joyed up,’” M’gann corrects him. “The use of the preposition ‘out’ implies depletion, doesn’t it?”

And Wally cannot believe he is nitpicking slang with a Martian raised on 70s daytime TV, so he resolutely grabs a plastic cup, ladles some punch into it, and spins around on his heel to face the straight path to where Artemis is eating M&M’s out of her hand.

M’gann claps him on the back, and it packs _way_ more force than he was prepared for. “Good luck, Wally!”

“Make right what has gone wrong, my friend,” Kaldur encourages him. “Poseidon will watch over your endeavor.”

“Don’t screw it up, okay,” Conner grunts.

“Right,” Wally mutters, vibrating for a moment to psych himself up. “Right! I got this! I’ll just go up to her, and—and apologize! Yeah! And tell her we can clear things up! Doesn’t have to be awkward! Short and simple!”

“He’s going to screw it up, isn’t he.”

“Shhhh, Conner!”

M’gann shoves Wally forward, and once he’s taken a couple of steps, there’s not really any chickening out. Artemis is getting closer and closer. “Pumped Up Kicks” sounds _way_ far away. His life is kind of flashing before his eyes.

“What’re you staring at, weirdo?” Artemis asks out of the muffled roar, settling his wavering vision.

Oh. Man, she is _right_ next to him. He must have instinctively leaned against the wall in order to look cool and laid-back, but he’d neglected to not actually have his face aimed directly at hers.

“Uh,” his brain forces his mouth to stutter out before he can calm down, and, because of his delayed reaction, it comes out sounding a lot like “ _d’uh_.” Nice one, West. “Um, nothing!”

Artemis’s eyes (edged with winged eyeliner, but nothing else—she’s always been kind of a minimalist) flick up and down his body, totally unreadable. And he’s gotten pretty good at reading Artemis, so for her to make him come up empty… oh, man, he is so in for it.

She shrugs, finally, tilting her head back and dumping the last of the M&M’s into her open mouth. As she chews, she does something that looks like fidgeting but might actually be a stealthy way of inching a little closer to him.

“You were right,” she says at last. “We did need this.”

Wally gulps, and it’s like the loudest sound in the room to him. He actually feels a little sweaty.

“T-Told you,” he manages to wrestle out. “I _am_ the King of Great Plans.”

“Could use an arsenic pie or two, though,” Artemis says. It’s evident even in her voice that she’s trying to fight back amusement. “I can see if Robin has a line to Joker’s cell in Arkham.”

“Right, if Joker’s still even there,” Wally says. “It’s been, what, two weeks since we caught him last? He’s _definitely_ busted out by now.”

Artemis huffs out a half-laugh. “Probably.”   

Wally hadn’t even noticed right away how quickly they’d returned to casual shop talk, nor how easy it had been. As a matter of fact, Artemis seems _way_ less freaked out than her behavior over the last few days has led him to infer. And she hasn’t dealt him a break-up card yet, despite overwhelming evidence that it’s in her hand. Is his data off? Was his hypothesis misguided? If anything, she seems…

“Fine,” Artemis says, dropping her hands to her sides and balling them into determined fists. “I’ll start. This awkwardness is killing me. So—sorry. I’ve been avoiding you, and that was wrong of me. You deserved better than that. I guess I was just kind of facing down two daunting options if I _did_ talk to you: either you’d say that the thing you said was a mistake, or you’d say it was for real, and I’d have to say the thing back. Which would have been… a lot. Or, well, I thought it would’ve been, anyway, but… it’s been surprisingly less a lot than I figured. So. Yeah. There’s that.”

She sounds nervous. One or two of those words had shaken, and she had punctuated the choppy monologue with an awkward laugh. It feels like the perfect complement to the squirming, fluttering _thing_ that seems to have taken up residence in his stomach and heart.

She doesn’t say anything more. He’s up, ready or not.   

“This punch,” Wally says, scrambling for something dazzling and intelligent to say that will unravel the knot of tension gathered in his abdomen, “is so good.”

“I think I might love you, too, you know,” Artemis says, with conviction.

Wally’s whole body halts midway through taking a breath. Slowly, he turns his head to look at her, at how the dizzying spin of the variegated flecks of light from the disco ball light up her eyelashes, her lip gloss, the roundest parts of her shoulders.

She’s smiling.

“I mean, jury’s still out. And I’m a little out of practice. But I’ve got a feeling.” She sighs, lifting her chin to look up at the ceiling and the streamers. “You really outdid yourself with this whole spread. My real prom’s gonna have a lot to live up to.”

In the middle of the dance floor, Zatanna and Dick are trying to show Red Tornado how to dance. Dick starts doing the robot, and Red Tornado watches him with calculated interest, and Zatanna’s laugh shoots all the way up to the rafters.

“Well.” Wally clears his throat, even though every single part of him is overheating like some blundering old computer and his face is pulsing with heat. “Couldn’t have done it without my co-planner.”  

Artemis snorts at that one, curling slightly into her crossed arms with the force of it. “Oh, yeah. You’re welcome, for all that hard labor I did. Where would you be without me, right?”

 _I ask myself that all the time_. Thank God he doesn’t let _that_ one slip out. That would be way too much embarrassment for one week.

Kaldur is leading Conner and M’gann in a popular Atlantean dance. M’gann lends grace to it naturally, floating this way and that as though actually underwater, but Conner is much clunkier, clearly frustrated by the complex series of hand movements he has to imitate. Just when he looks like he’s about to give up, M’gann clasps his hand in hers and kisses his nose.

“Haha, gross,” Artemis chuckles.

Wally swallows his fear and indecision, and reaches for her hand. Her fingers net into his without stiffness, and it’s cheesy, but it feels really right, and he doesn’t want to let go.

“Shall we, milady?” he asks in his best Wall-man drawl.

Artemis raises an eyebrow wryly at him, but the smile doesn’t leave her.

“Not if you’re gonna talk like _that_ , loser,” she says, but walks out onto the floor with him anyway.

The ceiling could pass for the sky outside. Artemis is right, Wally thinks—he really _did_ outdo himself. Watching her grin up at it in wonder, one hand on his shoulder and the other holding her loose hair out of her face, Wally feels like he could run right up into the stars and never stop going until he brought her back the moon.

Of course, that would be disastrous for the planet Earth and would likely cause a massive crater that would wreak havoc on the flow of the tides and the entire climate for thousands of years, so.

A free-spirited laugh breaks apart the fleeting kiss she leaves on his mouth. He’s not gonna get carried away or anything.

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been working on this for way longer than i should ever have worked on a fic of this length. but, man! this was going to be for young justice appreciation month way back when, and then it just never got finished, but now here it is. thanks, anon, for giving me the little nudge i needed to wrap it up. this is for you! i hope you like it! <3


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